This invention pertains to apparatus for changing the orientation of oblong pads, such as sanitary napkins, after they are discharged from a pad fabricating machine and are enroute to a pad stacking device which stacks the pads in preparation for their being packaged.
The pads come out of the pad forming machine on a conveyor belt on which they are arranged in end-to-end relationship. That is, the pads move longitudinally along a path that is coincident with or parallel to their long or longitudinal axes. This is not the proper orientation for transferring the pads to a stacker which groups them for packaging. The pads must be fit into the stacker sideways, that is, with their transverse or short axis moving in a longitudinal direction. This means that the pads must be turned 90.degree. at some time as they progress from the pad forming machine to the stacker.
A conventional way of doing this is to have one belt conveyor transporting pads along a staight line which is perpendicular to the path of movement of another belt conveyor. At the junction of the two conveyors, the practice was to discharge the pads moving in a straight line along one conveyor into a lug-chain conveyor to thereby bring about what was effectively a 90.degree. turn of the pads. The problem with the conventional arrangements is that the napkins have to be accelerated sufficiently high to cross the gap between the two conveyors and land between two pairs of adjacent lugs without hitting one of the lugs. A machine for transferring pads such as sanitary napkins around a corner and turning them 90.degree. is illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 3,391,777; particularly in FIG. 13 of said patent. The part of the sanitary napkin production line wherein the pads had to be turned or reoriented sets the limit as to how many pads can be produced by the machine. One of the disadvantages of using a pad turning station wherein a longitudinal conveyor intersected with a transversely moving conveyor is that the arrangement requires an L-shaped conveyor configuration which complicates the machine floor layout. In other words, more wasted space has to be allowed between production lines if there are several napkin production lines adjacent each other.